Hey you idiot third party voters!

The BBQ Pit
101

I was responding particularly to your assertion that:

Winner-take-all majority rule voting is uniquely good at translating individual preference into social preference. If I had to pick a reason not to jettison the electoral college, this would be it.

It is completely relevant because Arrow’s criteria are basic measures of electoral fairness. Others have presented more properties that electoral rules should have, and fortunately there is enough of a vigorous debate on the subject that I was able to finagle a graduate degree in it.

It might be possible to make an argument that the chance of a split ballot is a more serious problem that failing to meet basic electoral criteria of fairness, but this is something that needs to be proven, not assumed.

Sure. The French election of 2002. The French ended up having to choose between a crook and a fascist due to strategic nomination. Chirac won by a landslide but at the same time, was loathed by almost eveyone who voted for him. Le Pen only got as far as he did because the left spammed the election with candidates.

This doesn’t really solve the problem at all. Even if a small party that meets the criteria of a super-proportional scheme can still have disproportionate influence in a coalition government. If a small party is pivotal, then its interests dominate the agenda.

Oh, sorry. This one is actually really simple. :slight_smile: Basically, unrestricted domain means that the social choice function has to take into account absolutely all voter preferences to yield a complete and unique ranking of preferences.

102

Keep your eyes on the prize: The next step beyond that is proportional representation. Which the U.S. will probably be the last democracy to adopt, after the UK.

For political movement toward all of these (in the U.S.), check out the Center for Voting and Democracy.

Haste the day we have a real multiparty system!

But, for now, whatever your view might be of the Big Two, please, please don’t throw away your vote!

103

I hope I am dead long before the US adopts PR. I don’t want there to be enough of my body left to roll around.

104

You probably will be. But, why?

105

Because it’s awful.

106

Only when combined with a parliamentary system, as in Israel or Italy. That can lead to instability (though I think the frequent changes of government in those countries says more about their political culture than their political system) But in a separation-of-powers system like we have at the federal level and in every state, the executive is separately elected and there is no need for a majority party or coalition in the legislature to “form a government.” In any case, a multiparty system is better than a two-party system.

107

Maeglin: I am honestly intrigued by your claims. But you’re giving me shorthand, rather than an argument. This is the pit so that’s ok. But, again, a link or a cite would be nice.

I don’t see how. I trust that you have an interesting and probably mathematical argument in mind.

Ok, so Arrow’s properties do not relate to the split ballot problem.

I think you meant “demonstrated”: these are axioms so they can’t be proven. (I’m not just picking nits here: if I’m wrong in this respect, let me know).

Thanks. ::Files away example::

An example would make the argument more persuasive. Italy and Israel are disallowed, as their dysfunction is universally recognized.

So… approval voting doesn’t meet the unrestricted domain criteria - but plurality voting does? :confused:

Let’s not be so naive to believe that we live in a democratic system:

But VarlosZ, possibly inspired by Bryan Caplan, demolishes this argument. An individual vote makes no difference except as a form of self-expression. The calculus model doesn’t work: if there’s a close election, the Judiciary makes the call rather than the marginal voter. And we know from Bush vs. Gore that they can do whatever they want.

Of course there may be a tipping point where one vote could cause an election not to be challenged. But that won’t make a difference either: if the margin is that large, then a challenge won’t be successful. No, though 1000 votes can alter an election, 1 vote doesn’t matter at all, so we can’t rely on strategic behavior by the citizenry.

Apropos nothing, here’s a link: Nation magazine article points out problems with Instant Runoff Voting.

108

It doesn’t show that you’re “right”. It shows, firstly, that the conservatives had enough numbers and influence to scare Republican strategists, which is not the case for the hard left. Secondly, I don’t know that conservatives actually have accomplished their goals. Roe v Wade is still in place, the number of states recognising gay marriage or a variation is increasing, the US is still despite their best efforts a largely officially secular place. Unless all they want is for the Republicans to throw them a bone like Sarah Palin every so often, I don’t think they’re really achieving that much either.

You know, I didn’t always not vote Democrat. I did for years in fact. So did the DSA. It didn’t work. That is the reality. Democrats are never going to be the means by which my principles can be achieved because the Democrats don’t share my principles. That is what it comes down to.

109

Ok, I think I see the problem with instant runoff now. You can get a split ballot if one side or another is too crowded.

Consider one conservative and three left of center candidates. It’s easy to imagine a situation where the most centrist of the lefties is most appropriate/has the widest appeal but the furthest left guy beats the other two lefties. This could happen if there were two center-left folks (Biden and Dodd say) competing against a moderate socialist like Bernie Sanders. So in the last runoff, you would be left with Bernie Sanders vs. GWBush in my hypothetical example.

However.

No voting system is perfect, as shown by Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem. Which system is least-bad is matter of mathematical properties, but also the likelihood of certain preference configurations. And the latter is an empirical matter.
The next time the board has a smilie election, we should have everyone fill out multiple ballots, and rank each choice according to plurality voting, instant runoff, approval voting, etc. We might even run a straw poll ahead of time to give people the option of voting strategically.

110

And, besides not voting or voting for the disingenious Greens mentioned in the OP, how would one do that, exactly? The electorial college assures that in a state like TN a vote for Obama has as much effect on the outcome of the election as does a vote for the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, or the Pierced Nipples Party: none at all.

111

Are you saying the country hasn’t become more conservative in the last twenty five years? That the Republican Party hasn’t become more conservative? That no laws that favor conservative causes have been enacted? That no conservative judges have been appointed and no conservative legal decisions have been made? Seriously?

112

One problem with proportional representation is that it often gives more power to the parties. Some voters prefer to vote for individual candidates rather than parties.

If the United States, for example, were running a closed proportional representation system in 2008, Hillary Clinton would be running for President instead of Barack Obama.

113

Wow, that’s quite a lot to read into what I actually said, which is that the country has not become the Christian fundamentalist state they want it to be. In some ways it has become more conservative; in others, such as the increasing recognition of same sex relationships, the opposite has happened or there has been no significant movement at all. The point here is that while the fundies have had some success with some - some - of their policy objectives, they haven’t achieved the thorough overhaul of society that they seek. And neither can the left achieve that by voting Democrat, some shared policy objectives with the DP notwithstanding.

114

My local Democrat Congresscritter ran with no Republican opponent, so I voted Independent.

I can’t stand that do-nothing, & I hope he loses.

115

I see 3 aspects here.

  1. The racist right will have difficulty having direct effects upon the Republican platform, because they are electorally toxic. Republican pandering will be limited to dog-whistle politics.

Similarly, those seeking the collectivization of farming won’t get that from the Democrats. What I mean to say here is that some third parties have positions so extreme that neither of the 2 majors wants their support.

Environmental policy does not fall into this category. Health care reform does not fall into this category. Empirically grounded anti-poverty measures don’t fall into this category.

  1. There are means of influence other than the ballot box. Indeed, I believe them to be prerequisite. There’s persuasion via book, article and electronic media. There’s addressing the objections to your proposals, as opposed to papering them over. There is also compromise.

Advocates of the criminalization of abortion neglect this route, IMHO. I seriously doubt whether any of them could persuade this pro-abortion extremist that a first trimester fetus is a morally relevant entity. But even I might have some sympathy for well-conceived and vetted curbs on third trimester abortions. Yet I have yet to come across a serious anti-abortion treatment of this issue. The only arguments that reach me are scientifically dubious characterizations and emotional appeals.

This might explain the religious right’s lack of success beyond the symbolic more than anything else: they don’t engage the serious discourse particularly well.

  1. Nobody gets to achieve thorough overhaul. Those whose position is “My way or the highway” need to grow up.

A single vote has no effect regardless of the voting system. But 3000 votes can affect the margin of victory of victory under all schemes.

116

Not when the odds are stacked so heavily against one candidate, as they are in TN. In 2004, the amount of votes for 3rd party candidates were not enough to switch the vote from Bush to Kerry.

117

You may be overinterpreting the fine work of fivethirtyeight.com . I’m not sure that their methodology has been backtested. Also, note their disclaimer: So is this your prediction about what will happen in the election? Not necessarily. The goal of the model is to do absolutely as much as it can with current state-by-state polling data. That is not exactly the same thing as accounting for external contingencies that might move the polling data (and, more importantly, the actual election result) in the future. So they are saying, “Given our inputs into the model, these are the predicted outcomes.” Now their inputs are quite good and their treatment serious. But I’m seeing a lot of state-level probabilities that are pinned at zero or 100%, which doesn’t seem plausible to me – the odds of some sort of October surprise moving forward are above 5% alone.

Nitpicks aside, TN appears to be a Safe Republican state in 2008.

118

It seems appropriate, in a discussion such as this, to introduce an excerpt from a book by Douglas Adams:

Take from it what you will…

119

Considering that the governor (a Dem and in charge of the Obama campaign efforts here) told the Obama campaign to not bother with the state as it was too far into the red, I’m gonna say “No. I’m not overinterpreting their work.”

IIRC, third party candidates in TN got something like 14K votes in 2004, and Kerry lost the state by some 100K+ votes.

120

Fair enough. I just didn’t want to set McCain’s odds for Tennessee at literally 100%, as the model seems to.

McCain and Obama are nonetheless correct to ignore safe states in October. If there’s a landslide election then some of the safe states could flip --it happened in 2004-- but that still wouldn’t justify putting expenditures into them, as they still won’t affect the final outcome. You want to pour funds into the places that you could win if the race was close.